Famed reporter dead at 81

Sunday

May 26, 2013 at 12:01 AMMay 26, 2013 at 1:00 AM

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Haynes Johnson visited Selma, Ala., months after a civil rights crisis there gripped the nation, he wrote in The Washington Evening Star that he had found "no discernible change in the racial climate of the city." When it came to employment, housing or education, blacks had made no real gains.

But he noticed something else as he traveled the South and talked to people.

As a result of what Selma's blacks and their white supporters had done, he wrote, "The Deep South will never be the same." He wrote that the demonstrations and march to Montgomery had lifted the spirits of blacks "everywhere."

Johnson's shoe-leather reporting and keen insights on the struggle of Southern blacks during the civil rights era won him the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 1966, one of many honors showered upon him during a career that spanned more than 50 years.

Johnson, a pioneering Washington journalist and author who helped redefine political reporting in addition to appearing on PBS and teaching journalism at the University of Maryland, died Friday at a Washington-area hospital after suffering a heart attack. He was 81.

Johnson spent about 12 years at The Evening Star before moving to its rival newspaper, The Post, in 1969. Johnson was a columnist for the Post from 1977 to 1994.

Haynes Bonner Johnson was born in New York City on July 9, 1931. His mother, Emmie, was a pianist, and his father, Malcolm Johnson, a newspaperman. The elder Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize for the New York Sun in 1949 for his reporting on the city's dockyards, and his series suggested the story told in the Oscar-winning film "On the Waterfront."

Johnson studied journalism and history at the University of Missouri, graduating in 1952. After serving three years in the Army during the Korean War, he earned a master's degree in American history from the University of Wisconsin in 1956.

Johnson resisted working in New York journalism to avoid being compared to his father. He worked for nearly a year at the Wilmington (Del.) News-Journal before joining the Star as a reporter.

He covered a wide range of stories, from earthquakes to President John F. Kennedy's inauguration to foreign conflicts, according to the book, "National Reporting: 1941-1986." He also wrote a series on blacks in Washington.

His reporting eventually took him to Selma, in the heat of summer, to report on the civil rights movement.

Johnson and his father are the only father and son to win Pulitzer Prizes for reporting.

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